Make a grown man cry. How to build a sad sounding blues guitar...

[Mor Paul]

Hmm... maybe my hijack thread should have had a post about the blues...


If you want a 50's blues sound, try an LS5 with p90s.
For 60's harder blues, an LP with humbuckers should work.

I know someone else has said it, with all due respect, think we can answer the guy's question about a good blues sound?

 

[Patrick from Davis]

I think Max is on to something, although I think that a tele or a strat could be added to the list.

This thread reminds me of this...

If you know of a song or a band that has something similar to what you would the guitar to sound like, post it, otherwise I suppose we are going to argue until the this post definitively determines that the mating habits of the rare Mexican Staring Frog of Southern Sri Lanka is truly the deciding factor for what is or is not a blues artist.
Patrick

 

[Mor Paul]

I think Max is on to something, although I think that a tele or a strat could be added to the list.

Those could be added, I guess. I normally think of Gibson when I think blues. I was raised in a home where the favorite artist was Clapton, and my mom was also a fan of BB King, who used a 336 or something. I think his had humbuckers, but 'buckers didn't come out until the later part of the 50s.

 

[exalted]

I said it once, I'll say it again.

Blues. No humbuckers. No p90's. No f-holes. Just the blues.

 

[Mor Paul]

Acoustic guitar.

After that, maybe a LP with P90s or PAF-style humbuckers.

Well... Looks like my first reply covered a lot of ground

 

[GoDrex]

 

[exalted]

Haha
Fair enough!
ccasion14:

 

[stubhead]

 

[tfarny]

My favorite onion article ever:
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28803
Also very on-topic:
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/38839

 

[Xplorervoodoo]

"All music is the blues.  ALL of it." --  George Carlin.

I'm definitely no blues afficionado, but if I were to attempt to build a "blues" guitar, I'd probably go with a chambered LPS with a set of pearly gates.

 

[vtpcnk]

>Regardless of my dislike for 95% of his music, he was simply one of the players in a very big field that was actively evolving, he was just >lucky to be one of the players that has survived this long. 

you have no idea what you are talking about. sorry for being rude - but that's how it appears to me.

if you really listened to all the initial old blues stuff (especially the guitar oriented ones) and take a look at how it chronologically developed and led to the birth of rock n roll, you wouldn't be saying what you did.

 

[ocguy106]

The blues in its rawest form is the extension of one's feelings put into music. To say that it can only be played on a pile of shiate acoustic guitar is absurd. It may have started that way, but that is only because the blues pre-dates the electric guitar. The harmonica is another widely used medium for expressing the musical concepts of the blues and has just as much a place in blues history as the guitar. Like I stated before the blues is outward pour of music to represents ones feelings. This can be done on an old POS or the most expensive guitar in the world and both would be as valid as the other. I spend 2 nights a week going to all the different blues bars and watching my dad play and have been doing so for years. I see everyone with their vintage stuff trying to find the elusive tone of some blues great of times past. I took the approach of building a guitar around everything I knew about my dad to find “his tone” and since he has gotten his new Warmoth his playing has become more expressive. Any artist needs to be at one with there medium and when this synergy occurs truly magical things can happen. If I spent 50k on a 50’s Strat or LP for that magical mojo I am positive my dad would prefer his warmoth and be able to be more soulful with it and therefore sound better. The one thing I will agree on is that the blues more then any other music form really needs to come from the heart to truly sound good. When I go to these jams their some players that for me are good players but just sound like they are going through the motions of playing other peoples stuff. Then there are the guitarist that aren’t actually blues players but this is really their only chance to get out and play and although they can run a pentatonic over a 1,4,5 it to lacks emotion.

To sum up my thoughts I think if you can convey your thoughts and feelings through music with a guitar, a harmonica or whatever and it is thoughtful and expressive and moves people then you have done your job. I would rather hear my dad play the blues on his electric then some drunk, poor, hack on an old beat up acoustic just because he fits the stereo type of where the blues may have originated from. (That’s not an entirely accurate description of where the blues originated from either).

 

[Mor Paul]

*sighs*

I'm leaving this topic now. I've answered the guys question as well as I can, and I don't want to get caught up in a flame war over music.

 

[Vol. Knob]

The blues in its rawest form is the extension of one's feelings put into music.

To sum up my thoughts I think if you can convey your thoughts and feelings through music with a guitar, a harmonica or whatever and it is thoughtful and expressive and moves people then you have done your job.

Yes.  But that does not make it blues.  Even if its played on an L5S with Pearly Gates through a Marshall.  Especially if the player is Clapton. 

When I go to these jams their some players that for me are goo players

Clapton is a GOO  player.  Unless he was on an L5S with two f holes and p-90s, then he'd just ooze.

 

[dbw]

I don't understand why you think that Vol Knob.  Sorry.  Anyway... I think the question was just a fun question of designing a "bluesy" Warmoth.  I would just make a standard strat in hollow swamp ash... and throw in an f-hole for good measure.

 

[David]

I don't understand why you think that Vol Knob.  Sorry.  Anyway... I think the question was just a fun question of designing a "bluesy" Warmoth.  I would just make a standard strat in hollow swamp ash... and throw in an f-hole for good measure.

Exactly!  I just thought it would be a fun topic.

Here is my current favorite guitar to play the blues on.  Always on the neck pick up-- a virtual Dimarzio P90.  I play it when I am depressed, but I don't know if it helps or makes things worse.

 

[David]

My favorite onion article ever:
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28803
Also very on-topic:
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/38839

Tfarny.  These are both very funny.  Got to love The Onion.

 

[red king]

I think Max is on to something, although I think that a tele or a strat could be added to the list.

This thread reminds me of this...

If you know of a song or a band that has something similar to what you would the guitar to sound like, post it, otherwise I suppose we are going to argue until the this post definitively determines that the mating habits of the rare Mexican Staring Frog of Southern Sri Lanka is truly the deciding factor for what is or is not a blues artist.
Patrick

Love this post Patrick!!! 

By the way, every blues artist who ever lived took something from someone that came before him and made it his own.  I love Robert Johnson, but even Robert Johnson stole his stuff from some guy you or I never heard of or even knew existed.  Do you think Robert Johnson invented those 6 notes?  Robert Johnson was a "cover artist" by today's standards as most of the time he played "standards" to get people to even listen to him.  All of the music of his that we have heard was recorded on 2 days of his entire life.  Is everything that you are based on 2 days of your life?

Don't hate on Jimi, Stevie and Eric just because you hate the hacks at the local blues jam that cop their licks (very badly) and have no idea what the blues really is.  Don't be a hater because they transcended the traditional blues and took it somewhere else and it became popular.  The only way that the blues can survive is to take it and turn into something of your own and pay homage to those that gave it to you.  That's what each of the three above did through their entire career.  That's what BB King does, that's what John Lee Hooker did, that's what Buddy Guy does, that's what Howlin' Wolf did, and so on.  That's what's great about the blues...if you have "it" inside you people will like it.  If you don't have "it" people can tell very easily.  That's why Steven Segal's blues records have not done so well!  Joe Bonamassa has "it", you can tell just by listening to a few bars.  Los Lonely Boys have "it", Doyle II has "it", Warren Haynes has "it", Gordie Johnson has "it".  The blues is alive and well, you just have to look for it.

 

[stubhead]

Don't hate on Jimi, Stevie and Eric just because you hate the hacks at the local blues jam that cop their licks (very badly)....

This is actually my problem, I know it and, finally, it just sort of amuses me... I'm 51, I've been playing electric string instruments for 38 of those years, teaching for 15, and I have
HEARD SO MUCH AWFUL GODDAM "BLUES" MUSIC.....

Every television commercial selling trucks, beer & burgers, every country singer throwing in the little flatted 7th note right at the end to show their "soul" - yes, I'm down with ya too, bro. For every SRV, there's a Joss Stone (or Uriah Heep!), turn on YouTube for a demo of ANY guitar product and out plops Ye Olde Pentatonic Blues Wank... yuk. It's like living on a desert island with a master pastry chef, and nothing else to eat or drink but Coca-Cola and Dunkin Donuts - yuk. I still love music with a blues element IN it, my new faves Oz Noy and OHM would be nowhere without it, but when I hear that de-do-do-do-WEE-WEE, it doesn't matter if it's Robben Ford or Bonamassa - yuk. Fortunately, there's SO MUCH other great music out there, I can avoid the stuff - kill the TV, kill the radio, squirt through the grocery store like a commando - maybe a five year blues fast will "cure" me....  :dontknow:

Somewhere in Useless Statisticland, I read that 94% of Americans have had their musical preferences entirely set by the age of 25, even when they listen to "new" music it's just retreads like Joss Stone, John Mayer, 50 Cent, The Darkness.... I know I'm one of the weird 6%, I need NEW music or my brain curls up like a dying worm.

Blues is NOT a "feeling", blues is a signifier that you need a new truck, bigger burgers, more beer.... :tard:

 

[GoDrex]

big orange text means it's really... something. :laughing7: